Benetton Treviso prop Ivan Nemer was on Friday suspended until the end of the season by the Italian Rugby Federation (FIR) after an investigation found he was the source of the rotten banana given as a Christmas present to a black teammate.
Following a federal court decision, the 24-year-old Nemer, who has won 11 caps, is suspended until June 30 and has given up his appeal, the FIR said in a statement.
Argentina-born Nemer was initially suspended, but not named, on Dec. 22, a day after his teammate Cherif Traore, also an Italy prop, had shared the banana incident on Instagram.
The 28-year-old, who was born in Guinea, had been given the “gift’ of a rotten banana during a secret santa exchange, a game where individuals buy presents that are then distributed anonymously.
“What hurt me the most was seeing most of my teammates present laughing,” Traore said on Instagram, adding that he had to put on “a brave face every time I hear racist jokes ... but yesterday was different.”
Treviso stressed its “firm condemnation of any expression of racism” in a news release with the players apologizing to Traore.
The FIR said it had taken into consideration Nemer’s desire “to shed full light on what had happened,” as well as his apology and the damage he had done to the image of Italian rugby.
“Racism has never played and never will play any role in my life, just as it should play no role in the life of any of us,” Nemer said in the statement. “I come from a multicultural country like Argentina, where cultures have intermingled for more than a century.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier